Improvisation

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Improvisation is the act of making something up as it is performed. This term is usually used in the context of music, theater or dance.

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Musical improvisation

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Classical improvisation

Improvisation has been an integral part of music since the very beginning of music, and it has been a very important element in Western Classical music for most of the past 1000 years. It is featured in many kinds of traditional music, including flamenco, pygmy and other African music, eastern classical music such as Carnatic, Hindustani, and Arabic music, modern music like rap music, and was once an important element in European classical music (see cadenza and figured bass).

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Some examples

  • Original score notations for Mediaeval organ music for example, commonly include instructions for improvisation and embellishments. The scales that were used were selected according to the same improvisation principles now used in Jazz.
  • When the single voice Plainsong started to develop into the 2, 3 or 4 part Organum (during the mid Mediaeval Period 1000 - 1300) , one or more of the parts were also commonly improvised, weaving free counter lines around the written melody line.
  • During the Baroque - (1600 - 1750), Classical - (1750 - 1830), and Romantic - Periods (1830 - 1900) improvisation flourished, especially for keyboard players (organ, piano, harpsichord). J.S. Bach, Haendel, Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt and many other famous composers and virtuoso pianists and organists, excelled in the art of improvisation, in those days called «extemporisation».
  • Many classical scores contained sections for improvisation. The preludes to keyboard suites by Bach and Handel for example consisted solely of a progression of chords. The performers used these as basis for their improvisation.
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Jazz improvisation

Blues, jazz and bluegrass are well-known for using improvisation. Improvisation can be structured, with certain rules constraining the improvisation (for example, "make up a song about bicycles", "use these chord changes", and so on), or can have no such constraints (free improvisation).

Since the 1950's contemporary composers require greater degrees of creativity and improvisation from performers using techniques such as less determinate or even vague notation such as indicating a number of sounds within a period of time. Groups based on jazz ensembles were founded such as Lukas Foss' Improvisation Chamber Ensemble at the University of California, Los Angeles; Larry Austin's New Music Ensemble at the University of California, Davis; the ONCE Group at Ann Arbor; the Sonic Arts Group; and the San Francisco Tape Music Center, the latter three funding themselves through concerts, tours, and grants. Significant pieces include Foss's Time Cycles (1960) and Echoi (1963). (Von Gunden 1983, p.32)

Other composers working with improvisation include Pauline Oliveros, Terry Riley, Frederic Rzewski, Karlheinz Essl, and Christian Wolff.

Musical improvisation is also a widely used technique in music therapy, in the form of clinical improvisation.

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Source

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Theater

See main article - Improvisational theater

Improvisation is a common tool for many actors. It is a staple of drama and theater classes at most colleges and high schools. According to the dominant acting theories of Konstantin Stanislavski, an actor improvising a scene must be trusting his own instincts. According to Stanislavski (see method acting), an actor must use his own instincts to define a character's response to internal and external stimuli. Through improvising, an actor can learn to trust his instincts instead of using mugging and indicating to broadcast his motives. Improv is also useful in its focus on concentration. Obviously, in an environment in which anything is allowed to happen, the actors must be capable of keeping their concentration throughout, even in difficult and stressful circumstances. Concentration is a staple of acting classes and workshops; it is vital that an actor be capable of concentrating on the scene or action at hand. Actors who fail to keep up with an improvisation are said to be blocking.

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Dance

Contact Improvisation: a form developed 30 years ago that is now practiced around the world. Contact improvisation originated from the movement studies of Steve Paxton in the 1970s and developed through the continued exploration of the Judson Dance Theater. It is a dance form based on sharing weight, partnering, playing with weight and unpredictable outcomes.

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Film

The director Mike Leigh uses lengthy improvisations developed over a period of weeks to build characters and storylines for his films. He starts with some sketch ideas of how he thinks things might develop but does not reveal all his intentions with the cast who discover their fate and act out their responses as their destinies are gradually revealed, including significant aspects of their lives which will not subsequently be shown onscreen. The final filming draws on dialog and actions that have been recorded during the improvisation period.

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Comedy

See main article - Improvisational comedy

Improvisation is also performed as an art form itself in theatres around the world, sometimes with dramatic intent but more often in comedic form (the most famous is Chicago's The Second City). Extemporizing on the methods of pioneers such as Viola Spolin, Paul Sills, Del Close, and Keith Johnstone, actors improvise often wildly funny scenes with amazing character work and believable behavior.

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Television

In the 1990s, a TV show called Whose Line Is It Anyway? popularized shortform comedic improvisation. The original version was British, but it was later revived and popularized in the United States with Drew Carey as a host. More recently, television shows such as HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm (starring Seinfeld co-creator Larry David) and Bravo series Significant Others have used improvisation to create longer-form programs with more dramatic flavor. Another improvisation based show is i's "World Cup Comedy." In Canada, the Global Television soap opera Train 48, based on the Australian series Going Home, uses a form of structured improvisation, in which actors improvise dialog from written plot outlines.

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Role-playing games

Some role-playing games (tabletop games, live action games, MUDs and some MMORPG computer games) often involve a casual form of improvisational acting. (See gamemaster for an example.) A player's character may be pre-defined, with game statistics and a history, but the character's response to game events and to other players is improvised. Some players are more interested in the depth of the "acting" than others; some are purely combat and game mechanic oriented, while others enjoy elaborate plots, emotional investment in characters, and intense or witty repartee.

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See also

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External links

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